Bosnia marks 13th anniversary of Srebrenica massacre

DPA Srebrenica (Bosnia-Herzegovina), July 11 (DPA) More than 40,000 people were expected Friday to attend the 13th commemoration of the massacre in the former eastern Bosnian Muslim enclave of Srebrenica. During the commemoration, 308 recently identified victims of the massacre are to be buried next to thousands of other victims interred in a memorial centre opened five years ago in Potocari, near Srebrenica.

With the funeral Friday, the number of Srebrenica victims buried in Potocari will total 3,214.

A day of national mourning in honour of the Srebrenica victims was declared by Bosnia-Herzegovina’s central government, the Council of Ministers.

The remains of an unknown number of victims exhumed from more than 60 mass graves discovered in the Srebrenica area during the last decade, and currently packed in more than 5,000 bags, are still awaiting identification and proper burial.

In what would be remembered as the worst atrocity since World War II, up to 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men were killed after Bosnian Serb troops captured the enclave July 11, 1995 during the 1992-95 war in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

At the time of the massacre, Srebrenica was under the protection of the United Nations as a “UN safe zone” with only some 150 Dutch soldiers deployed as protection. DPA